.m2v File cutting help please...

[rhuala2]

Is there a way to edit a combined .m2v and .ac3 file. I think I can take them into TMPGEnc somehow and maybe convert to MPEG or maybe using MPEG Tools, but I can't seem to get it working with TMPGEnc. Anyone know of a good way of taking say a large .m2v file, adding the .ac3 then cutting out some some frames.

I want to do this because I have a Simpsons Epsiode DVD that I want to stip out individual episodes and re-author using DVD Maestro. If theres another way to accomplish this in DVD Maestro that info would be just as nice. The other problem with using TMPGEnc and creating a MPEG file is that Maestro won't accept MPEG, unless I'm wrong here?

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

rhuala

[rhuala2]

bump

[Treebeard]

What type of mpegs are you creating? mpeg1 or mpeg2?

if its mpeg2 then dvd maiestro should accept that.

[rhuala2]

They are MPEG2, do you treat it as anormal asset ot import it some other way. If I open it as an asset I get error that's it's illegal file type? You can import MPEG2 file ok?

rhuala

[SLK001]

Maestro will only accept elementry streams, so you have to demux any MPEG2 streams into their individual parts (.M2V and .AC3).

TMPG can't cut out portions with .AC3 (at least it couldn't when I stopped using it), but it can cut when the audio is MPEG 1, LAYER II (.MPA). I would demux out the .AC3 file, convert it to .MPA using BeSweet, mux it back together, then use TMPG to cut out the commercials. You can then reconvert the .MPA back to .AC3.

The problem is that these conversions are not lossless, so use the maximum bitrate available in the intermediate steps to minimize quality loss.